What is a User Story?
We define a User Story as “a short description of a small piece of desired functionality written from the user’s perspective, implemented by Agile Teams as small, vertical slices that can be completed in a few days or less” [2]. But what does any of that really mean?
User Stories evolved from Extreme Programming (XP) [8] as a response to shortcomings in traditional software development methodologies. XP emphasizes the importance of collaboration between developers and customers with frequent feedback and an iterative approach to development. XP identified User Stories to capture customer requirements. The idea was to write brief informal descriptions of the user’s need, focusing on what the user wanted to achieve rather than how the software would accomplish it. The User Stories were typically written on index cards. The practice has evolved and was adopted by other Agile methodologies.
On the front of the index card, we typically...
